Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Fleet Rumble - Dropfleet Commander Meetup

Last Saturday, the Dropzone guys at Endgame Oakland got together to play some Dropfleet. We had 11 players show up (The One Who Is Late was late, of course) but only 3 of the 4 factions were represented.For some reason, no one brought Shaltari.

The day featured some amazing mats that were created by Low Orbit Mats, images above and below. I just placed an order for one last night, the desert/river one, "G".

We had the Bay Area all set up, too! You can see in the image above that the larger cities (San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, etc) and military(-ish) facilities (Lawrence Livermore and Travis AFB, I think) and industrial sites (Silicon Valley and the local farming hub of Fresno, etc) were represented, if only from memory. It was pretty cool relating the game directly to our area.

This was the 2nd full game I've ever played and it was a blast. I elected to play against Tony (I needed to learn the rules and that dude has a really good grasp of them and a far better memory than I).

We played the mission with the Moon in the middle and all that debris flying around. The crater model represented our irregular moon. As the map was sorta busy, visually, I propped the debris up on some dice to make spotting them easier.

Those UCM missile frigates are murder, but they do die petty quickly. I love the PHR Echo Corvettes and the launch asset bombers. A group consisting of 2 Pandora's and a Bellephoron are a great sniping force. All that Burnthrough is devastating.

We each did a pretty equal amount of damage to each other.

Aside from not fully utilizing my Battleship, I think I did pretty well. I lost 19 to 26. Mostly because I was too timid. Which is problem I have when I first start out playing a game. I really needed to advance my troop ships.

I'm signed up for Dropfleet and Dropzone at LVO this year, so I should get in a bunch more practice! I just have to finish painting my fleet.